A lot of the time, speech-language pathology is clumped together with audiology. This is a common association in many parts of the world, particularly when it comes to educational institutions and societies.
2.16 Veterinary medicine
For some reason, veterinarians get left out of the picture when the topic of health-care providers or allied health professionals comes up. In many ways, their practice is much more similar to medical and osteopathic doctors than some of the other health-care providers mentioned in the previous sections.
Veterinarians cover a full range of medical services to a variety of “patients,” prescribe medications, administer anesthetics, and perform complex surgery. Certainly the office setup can be very complex based on all the functions they perform, but there are many commonalities to the basic principles relating to office dynamics.
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Is The Health-Care Field The Right Choice For You?
I can’t emphasize enough that whatever stage of the medical career path you are at, nobody will really be happy with what you are doing if you have not gone into a medical career for the right reasons.
While many readers of this book will already be done with medical school and residency, others might just be thinking of applying to medical school, or to one of the allied health profession schools. It is for this reason that I am including some basic concepts to follow. If you are already in the profession, it is not a bad idea to reflect on your own personal reasons for being in your position.
While there is no ideal or perfect personality match for a career in the medical field, being aware of some of the characteristics that are compatible with the profession is vital. People might try and impart their own views about what type of person makes a good doctor or health-care professional, or who should become a doctor — do not buy into this. There is so much diversity is this career and a “cookie-cutter” type personality being the best for the job is just not the case. Having said that, there are clearly characteristics outlined in this chapter that are key to making the right decision about a career in medicine; just keep them in mind. It is all about being appropriately informed and aware of the big picture, before you embark on a career in medicine or any of the other health-care fields.
1. Good Reasons for Choosing a Health-Related Profession
This section outlines some of the good reasons to choose to be in a health-related profession.
1.1 You are a caregiver
As a caregiver, you get to care for your fellow human beings. From the time a person first steps into your office, into the hospital, into the operating room, or a specimen arrives at the laboratory, you are on the road to helping someone. This help can make a big change in someone’s life, as well as the lives of those around the person.
For example, let’s say your first patient of the day walks into your office with a severe sore throat. This person has come to you for help because he or she is unwell and has tried all the measures he or she can to make the situation better. You take a throat swab that turns out to be positive for a bacterial infection of the throat (i.e., strep throat). You prescribe a course of antibiotics, and within 48 hours the patient is much better, back at school and on the football field. The patient phones your office two days later and thanks you, as he or she is feeling much better. How rewarding is that? This is just one example of how you can make a change in another person’s life.
Medicine is all about taking care of people. This can occur in a myriad of ways, both directly and indirectly. No matter what field you choose, it will ultimately be about taking care of a patient. On the one end of the spectrum you might have the clinician who cares for, and about, his or her patients on a daily basis. On the other end of the spectrum you can have the clinician scientist, or pathologist, who cares about patients in a very different manner. Neither of these disciplines cares any more, or any less, about their patients, but rather cares for them in different ways.
Some of my mentors and role models, whom I can think back on, imprinted very specific characteristics relating to how I practice today. The most outstanding common feature is the way they cared for their patients, as well as others around them. To give you one example, I remember one particular surgeon during my residency training days that made an extra effort to make sure parents felt comfortable with any, and all, aspects of their child’s care. He really listened and made the parents feel like their child’s treatment was the most important thing that was going on at that very moment in time. Spending just a few extra minutes to make sure the parents were more comfortable meant the world to them and it was clearly evident.
For those who might be less caring, situations can come up in which a feeling of discomfort and anxiety on the patient’s part can arise, maybe even some animosity. Not only can this have an impact on the patient, but also on the physicians and any of the other people involved in the care of this patient. Negative energy has a domino effect — a health professional’s emotions can have implications on those around him or her. If you look at all the different allied health care fields mentioned earlier in the book, this concept can be applied to all of them.
1.2 Exciting
How much more exciting can it get than saving a person’s life? Picture yourself walking into an emergency room and seeing a young child gasping for air and unable to breathe. This young patient was eating a big candy and was given a fright by a friend, resulting in the candy being suddenly lodged in the child’s throat. I was actually on call once when this very scenario occurred and I was called immediately to the emergency room. Luckily enough, I was not far from the emergency room and was taking a short break in between surgeries; I was able to rush to the situation in no time.
Once I assessed the problem and saw how potentially grave this situation could be, I rushed the patient to the operating room. Due to the position of the candy in the throat, the patient was very fortunate that complete obstruction of the airway did not occur; in other words I had enough time to remove the candy in a more controlled environment and with the appropriate instrumentation. With the help of an anesthesiologist, a careful anesthetic was carried out. Using a steel rigid instrument (laryngoscope) and with a combination of a vacuum device and grasping forceps, the candy was successfully removed. The child woke up from the anesthetic without complication and the parents as well as all health-care parties involved in the care of this patient were ecstatic. Once I had some free time, I ventured back to the emergency room so that I could give feedback to the staff there, and thanked them for their part in the care, and positive outcome, of our mutual patient.
1.3 Rewarding
In the situation of a patient with cancer, it can obviously be very traumatic for all involved — especially the family, but the medical staff too. I can remember one child coming to the hospital very ill with fevers, loss of weight, and a recent history of bruising easily. After several investigations, which were all done on that day in the professional building where the doctor’s office was located, he was sent to the local hospital. All of this occurred because the family doctor was very concerned about some type of blood cancer. After the appropriate history and clinical examination in the emergency room, the child underwent an urgent bone marrow biopsy, in order to send some of the aspirate for analysis. A diagnosis of leukemia was made on that same day. As the patient was already in the hospital, he was started on chemotherapy. All of this happened within 24 hours.
Chemotherapy can be a very difficult time for the patient as there are many side effects. Also, there is no guarantee that a patient will be cured